Why do we want or even need so desperately to be noticed for what we do? For those who are married, it can be little things like wanting our spouse take notice of the work we had done around the house and to complement us appropriately. For those that work outside of the home and have a boss, it could be the desire to get rewarded for the excellence in a job well done. All we have to do is to think back over our own personal experience to recognize this. Perhaps informally looking through a book or two on how a leader can most effectively motivate the people around their organization will convince us that approval is a universal principle.
Sociologists have taught as the foundation of their field of study that there is a strong connection to a person's self-esteem and the issue of approval. The principle states that our self-confidence is derived early on by how we perceive that the person who is most important in our lives feels about us. Therefore, many husbands don't feel appreciated or even loved by their wives, who may full-well love them with all of their heart—simply because he has a desperate need for approval. Some women may continue to be loud and obnoxious around others, looking for their approval through making them laugh or whatever, when they are just wanting to read on another's face that they approve.
To remedy this, we study personality types and adjust our behavior accordingly; we study love languages of different genders and age groups hoping to find a key to unlock the passage-way into loving them. Perhaps these studies may help, but maybe they are premature. Have we given full consideration to the likelihood that we have never realized the full approval of God we now have in Christ? And by not realizing this fully in our own life, have we neglected to pass this kind of love that we have received from Him on to others?
Let's consider again the idea that our confidence is based upon what we perceive that the most important person in our life thinks of us. If this is true, what is the person to do who has a parent that is inappropriately disappointed all of the time? What is the wife to do who has an ungracious husband? Are they just victims to the circumstance and don't get to participate in many of the particular blessings of being in Christ? Thank God there is another way.
The brilliance of the Christian faith is that when Christ becomes our Life, it means He replaces any one person that we previously depended upon for approval and acceptance. This means that whoever occupied this place before, whether it was husband, wife, father, friend or pastor“it makes no difference, this is God's rightful place now. Equally important is the fact that the believer who is in Christ now has full approval of the ONE who is now most important—God the Father. This approval is no longer based on what we do, like all of our other relationships, but is based upon WHO WE ARE, since the time we became a new creation.
"…for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the street corners to be seen by men." [1]
The real spiritual battle that exists is my glory verses God's glory [2]. This is a problem both for the unbeliever and the Christian. The unbeliever glorifies the created order of things“industry, progress, the human body and accomplishment. The Christian can be caught in this same trap as well but is susceptible to a new snare“that of works.
Paul touches on this in his book to the Philippian believers. He tells them pretty straight forwardly exactly what is important and what matters not. Eugene Peterson sums up what Paul says in chapter three, verses 4-9 this way:
What Paul is saying is that he no longer cares about his own resume, even if many of these items are "spiritual." Why? Because Paul is like most of us. He did these "good" things for his own glory instead of doing them for God's glory. Like the Pharisees that gave Jesus such a hard time,[4] he did his works of righteousness for the applause of men. He did them to satisfy his own aspirations of greatness.
What insights does this provide for us? That depends on what we try and put on our own Christian resumes as proof that we should be accepted. It also depends on why we do what we do. Today may be a great day to stop and recognize the wonderful approval we have in God because of Christ.[5] Today may be a wonderful day to pause and reflect on how this approval transforms our relationships with other people. Paul understood and communicated to us in his letters that "there is no condemnation for those in Christ Jesus."[6] This is not just a true statement, but was an expression of Paul's experience. This can be our experience as well if we will place God's approval as the foundation for our real lives. This is what ultimately gives glory to God.
I was in the 6th grade when I realized that all of my clothes were lame. I noticed that everyone around me had the latest high tops and Bugle Boy designer jeans, while I still had Velcro tennis shoes and Lee jeans. I hated my clothes.
One day I came home and on the table were a pair of shoes that looked cool. I raced over; excited that my Mom had been hip enough to know what was in style. Then I noticed that they were too small. She had bought them for my little brother! This was unbelievable. When she woke up from her nap, I let her have it. Being a kid and her being an adult, I lost the battle and was immediately sent to my room. When my Dad got home, he brought in a similar pair of shoes, this time they were the right size. I looked and was immediately confused. As I remember it, he carefully said something like this to me,
That was it. I never got those shoes and looking back on the incident today, I know I deserved it. The more I think about that story, the more I realize that my actions were motivated by the need to gain the approval of my friends. To this end, I didn't care enough about my Mom to show respect or even listen. My sin was a direct result of my need for the self-glorification that comes from being approved of and popular. This, of course, did not bring any glory to God until I repented.
If most of us are honest, we will recognize that we work a great deal for our own glory and not enough for the glory of God. Is this an exaggeration? I don't believe so. This is the center piece of the approval addict. The approval addict has to know that someone else likes them, approves and ultimately agrees with what they have done or said. What's so wrong with this? Besides all of the practical ramifications, like the people from whom we are looking for approval being sinful and fickle, there is a spiritual issue at stake as well. The confidence of the one seeking this kind of approval is entirely misplaced.[7] Instead of being centered in what God ultimately thinks, it is centered in what man thinks. This is a trap in the world for certain, but may even be a more dangerous one in the church.
The Bible unquestionably proves this as much as our own experience does. What was the number one ailment described in the first century church? What was the biggest problem that divided and ran people off track in their faith? Was it political scandal, sexual sin or deception? Even though these problems undeniably existed, they don't hold a candle to the issue of legalism.
Legalism in its purest form, trying to keep the law, was rooted out and rejected quickly. But legalism was able to quickly morph into something much more acceptable, but equally deadly. It adapted into a form of godliness that added acts of righteousness as a basis of acceptance before God and other people to the basic gospel of Christ. So the kind of legalism that is most treacherous is the kind that is receptive to receiving Christ but also elevates unnecessary regulations and works to the point where they are at the same level as God's grace.[8] The promoters of such a thing enforce these through taking advantage of a person's need for approval. They intuitively use rejection, peer pressure and guilt to persuade others to fall in line. To this sort of thing, Paul has some very powerful words. This will be the subject for tomorrow.
My counsel is this: Live freely, animated and motivated by God's Spirit. Then you won't feed the compulsions of selfishness. For there is a root of sinful self-interest in us that is at odds with a free spirit, just as the free spirit is incompatible with selfishness. These two ways of life are antithetical, so that you cannot live at times one way and at times another way according to how you feel on any given day. Why don't you choose to be led by the Spirit and so escape the erratic compulsions of a law-dominated existence?
It is obvious what kind of life develops out of trying to get your own way all the time: repetitive, loveless, cheap sex; a stinking accumulation of mental and emotional garbage; frenzied and joyless grabs for happiness; trinket gods; magic-show religion; paranoid loneliness; cutthroat competition; all-consuming-yet-never-satisfied wants; a brutal temper; an impotence to love or be loved; divided homes and divided lives; small-minded and lopsided pursuits; the vicious habit of depersonalizing everyone into a rival; uncontrolled and uncontrollable addictions; ugly parodies of community. I could go on. This isn't the first time I have warned you, you know. If you use your freedom this way, you will not inherit God's kingdom.
But what happens when we live God's way? He brings gifts into our lives, much the same way that fruit appears in an orchard--things like affection for others, exuberance about life, serenity. We develop a willingness to stick with things, a sense of compassion in the heart, and a conviction that a basic holiness permeates things and people. We find ourselves involved in loyal commitments, not needing to force our way in life, able to marshal and direct our energies wisely.
Legalism is helpless in bringing this about; it only gets in the way. Among those who belong to Christ, everything connected with getting our own way and mindlessly responding to what everyone else calls necessities is killed off for good—crucified.
Since this is the kind of life we have chosen, the life of the Spirit, let us make sure that we do not just hold it as an idea in our heads or a sentiment in our hearts, but work out its implications in every detail of our lives. That means we will not compare ourselves with each other as if one of us were better and another worse. We have far more interesting things to do with our lives. Each of us is an original.
Because each of us is an original, we have far more interesting things to do with our lives than to compare ourselves with each other as if one of us were better and another worse.
The key to growth is to keep the main thing the main thing. Good motivators know that the secret to taking anyone to the next level is to keep it simple. An athlete, student or salesperson may suffer from a myriad of problems that are obstructing their path to success; however a good coach knows how to identify the big rocks in order to help them move forward.
Let's say a salesperson wants to know how to be successful in his field and consults with a personal coach who he believes will help him. What will help him the most? His coach starts the best way she knows how—she has him watch a training video presentation. The student implements many of the principles in the training and later reports that he still doesn't see any results. So the coach decides it would be good for the trainee to see good salesmanship in action. So she invites him to come and watch her do it and instructs him to imitate what he sees.
After trying to implement what he observed for a week, the results still haven't changed for the apprentice, in fact they are worse. Finally, after not knowing what else to do, the coach goes and watches her pupil in action in order to see if there are any fundamental problems. After watching him during two presentations it becomes clear what the trouble was the entire time. The salesperson was completely unsuccessful because he was exceedingly rude and dismissive to his prospects. One would think that anyone who interacted with people for a living would understand this fundamental point, but apparently this particular salesperson had not. The problem was not technical, it was fundamental. The coach will have the best results if she addresses the fundamentals rather than the technical side of sales.
Hundreds of years ago, in an effort to help people identify the fundamental roadblocks to a healthy spiritual life, a group of Christian leaders put together a list of deep-seated attitude problems that could literally destroy a person's spirit. The purpose of such a list was not to minimize the problems that were absent from the list so everyone could get away with the lesser sins. The intention was to highlight things that needed to be dealt with in order to cut off the source of every other problem. The list came to be known as the seven deadly sins: pride, envy, gluttony, lust, anger, greed and sloth. Among these, it is widely held that pride was the deadliest of them all.[11]
So the question, "What do I need to do next about this problem I have of wanting approval?" The answer to that is very simple. We need to address the pride in our life. We all have it; it just shows up differently for everyone. For some, pride leads to showing off. For others, it leads to being extremely self-conscious. Still others, pride motivates our success. It always leads to comparing ourselves with other people and trying to fix everyone around us to accommodate what we would like to see happen. No matter what the outside result looks like, the inside result is still the same.
What is the antidote? The remedy for pride is always praise for God.[13] Consider once again the life of Paul. Paul made allowance for only one kind of boastfulness in his ministry. What kind of boasting did Paul endorse? Did he allow for nationalism, rooting for my favorite team or in a job well done? No, Paul permitted for Christians to only boast in the accomplishments of God.
Instead of paying attention to all the other junk stuff that is going on in our lives and worrying about everyone else, look at what has God accomplished in our lives that's worthy of praise. What if we were to shift our focus upon this? The idea of praising God in spite of what everyone else is doing is not a trip to pie-in the sky Idiot-Ville or a denial-producing exercise of whistling in the dark. It is warily and wisely following in the footsteps of the likes of King David, Jesus and the Apostle Paul who walked this same road before we were born.
Christian men and women like these, whose faiths we admire, understand that people have expectations of us that we may never meet—but God's expectations are met in Christ. They also understood that we don't have to puff up with pride in order to build our self-esteem or make people notice us. They knew through faith that the most important person in the world was fully pleased with them, therefore all of their praise could be directed toward Him. They knew that if they ended up missing out on success, fame, the approval of their earthly parents, acceptance as they would have it—and all the other trappings of approval, but they knew and praised God, that their life was well-lived.